Jury deliberates guilt or innocence of Woody

Sara Anne Woody, 25, watches as closed circuit television testimony is given by her stepson, an alleged victim, Thursday morning in the 30th District Court. Woody is charged with 26 counts of injury to a child, a first-degree felony. This photograph was altered to protect the identity of the alleged victim.(Photo: CHRISTOPHER WALKER/TIMES RECORD NEWS)Buy Photo

Around 11:45 a.m. Tuesday, six men and six women filed into the jury room to deliberate the guilt or innocence of Sara Anne Woody.

They are being charged to “decide the fate of a 25-year-old woman with four children,” defense attorney Reggie Wilson said during closing arguments.

For 13 months, Wilson said the defense team has “carried the burden of defending Sara on these charges. Now we transfer that burden to you (the jurors).”

Woody is facing three counts of injury to a child resulting in serious mental deficiency, impairment or injury for “engaging in a pattern of child abuse and/or torture” of two stepsons and her oldest daughter. She is also indicted on 23 counts of injury to a child resulting in bodily injury.

Wilson walked the jury through the prosecution’s evidence and several of the issues and concerns he had and how he believed it didn’t meet the burden of proving the case against Woody beyond a reasonable doubt.

“What does she have to gain by doing any of this?,” Wilson said. “She is the mother of their baby brother.”

He also questioned why Woody would want to watch the prepubescent boys going around the house naked and why would she want them going naked in front of her young daughter.

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Sara Anne Woody, 25, is accused of 26 counts of injury to a child stemming from allegations of child torture and abuse. She has plead not guilty to each count.
Wochit

Wilson said he doesn’t “blame them for changing stories — that is what they had to do to get what they wanted.” He argued that the boys were getting all the sweets, video games and television time they wanted with their grandparents, which they weren’t getting under Woody’s rules and care.

Wilson also argued the prosecution had “an empty chair” in their case — the boys’ biological mother. The prosecution, he said, didn’t try to go find her to testify and left a hole in their case. He also speculated what she might have testified regarding the trauma the boys had experienced previously.

Ultimately, Wilson said Woody took the boys in when they were looking for a mother figure and tried to raise them as best as she could.

“She picked up these kids when no one else wanted them,” he told jurors. “She hugged them and treated them as one of her own.”

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The prosecution will continue to make its case against Sara Anne Woody, a 25-year-old woman accused of 26 counts of injury to a child. Jurors have already heard from an ER doctor at United Regional Health Care System, two Burkburnett police detectives, two of Woody's relatives and her two former stepsons.
Patrick Johnston/Times Record News

During the prosecution’s closing arguments, John Gillespie said he didn’t call the biological mother because she wasn’t there to witness the abuse alleged in the case.

The lead prosecutor said he believed the defense brought her up and introduced much of their evidence as distractions and diversions away from the allegations made by the boys against the defendant.

Gillespie answered several of Wilson’s questions he had inquired of the jurors. He said Woody used shame and nudity as punishment, because it was the worst thing a Christian fanatic could think of and pointed to an example from Game of Thrones.

He also noted the fact that the defense never called any of her friends from Burkburnett or any of the other mothers from their homeschool group to testify, showing an increased isolation of the children, he believed.

If these children were masterminds determined to get back at their strict stepmother by creating an elaborate story of abuse, Gillespie argued, why could the older boy — who had a 77 IQ, according to testimony in the case — not rationalize that his feet would get muddy again.

The prosecutor was talking of testimony from their paternal grandmother that the boy had gotten his feet dirty and had to be reminded to wash them off. Once he finished, he started to walk back through the mud to take the hose back to where he got it from.

In the end, Gillespie said Woody only cried for herself while on the stand. The rest of her testimony, he said, felt “very rehearsed and she had an excuse for everything.”

Gillespie said it was time for the jurors to convict her and find her guilty — something he believed she already knew to be true.